Very exciting news – the greens that we planted in mid-January in the greenhouse started coming up about a week and a half ago! I think 7 of the 9 types of greens have started germinating. The asian greens were the first to come up, as they can handle the coldest temperatures, and just looking at them today, they look much more vigorous a week and a half in than the greens that we had planted back in September. This is probably due to the fact that we were given some manure compost from friends a while back, which is adding nutrients to the soil.
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| Looks a bit bare; most of the greens are under the row cover |
Also exciting – since Orrin finished putting up a couple walls on Gigi's shelter, she has seemed much more content and hasn't tried to make a run for it since I last wrote about it in mid-January. Yay!
Orrin has been creating new areas of pasture for the animals, by cutting down saplings in the areas that would have been pasture before.
Orrin's also been working hard on the other house, with occasional help from me, and now pretty regular help from our friend, Jake. He and his wife and son (older than Oliver by 2 months) will be moving into the guest suite in April. His assistance will improve the odds of it getting done in time, since I can't always help out. At this point, all but one of the windows have been framed, the interior walls have been built and placed in their correct spots (there was interior framing already, so some of it just needed to be moved around to go with our design, and some of it was newly made). They are now working on adding the strapping in the ceiling, and other preparatory things needed to put the vapor barrier in place.
We had been eating greens out of the greenhouse until around mid-January, at which point we ran out of large enough leaves to pick. We left a few leaves on each plant, so that they would be strong enough to start growing when the temperature and daylight allowed. It seems like that time has come already. Orrin just picked a bunch of fresh kale, arugula and mustard greens from under the row cover, the first bunch in about a month and a half. Next year we'll be better prepared by having more plants, and more mature plants, to get us all the way through winter on fresh greens.
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| A sight for sore eyes - fresh greens in February! |
Lots of snow this year, the biggest winter for both Orrin and I since we were kids – Alaska for me, interior BC for him. It's been quite an adjustment. It's definitely a winter wonderland, but we've had some logistical challenges. With a half-mile driveway, we had to hire someone to plow it. The first person we hired is a neighbor with an old farm tractor that could handle a small amount of snow. But once the big storms hit, he couldn't plow it very efficiently – it would have taken him all day to plow the driveway. We then found another neighbor with a plow truck. He's done a great job and been pretty reasonably priced. People have suggested we get our own truck to plow in the future, and believe me we've thought of that. But our goal is to decrease our vehicles, not increase, so we decided that it makes more sense to hire someone who already has the right equipment. That way we don't have to pay for the maintenance and insurance on another vehicle, and could possibly trade plowing for veggies or meat.
I also wish we'd had some snowshoes going into winter, to make it easier to walk around the house and other areas of the property. We were pruning apple trees last week, on a beautiful sunny day, and I was sinking into the snow above my knees. At this time of year, used snowshoes seem pretty expensive. I'm hoping they won't be as expensive if I look for them in the spring or summer. But a definite must around here!
We've had a few nice days in the last week or so that have really gotten us itching for spring. We planted some garlic in the greenhouse today, hoping to have garlic a little earlier in the summer than when the rest of the bulbs will be ready. We've ordered quite a few vegetable seeds, berries, and fruit and nut trees this year, and look forward to creating the garden beds, planting seeds, and expanding the orchard (currently just apple trees) once the snow is gone and the soil has warmed enough.
Yesterday we built a small greenhouse out of pine saplings that Orrin cut down, and scraps of plastic from the main greenhouse. We put it over the compost pile, so that on sunny days the snow will melt faster in there and give us quicker access to the compost. We'll need it in the greenhouse when we start planting the bulk of the veggies, both for what's seeded directly in the ground and for what will be transplanted.
